


Carson City

by idelthoughts



Category: The Mentalist
Genre: Character Study, Child Neglect, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Young Patrick Jane
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-12
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-12 00:47:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29376603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idelthoughts/pseuds/idelthoughts
Summary: When things are tight just after Patrick’s eighth birthday, his dad checks him into Child Protective Services in Carson City. He sells it like an all-expenses-paid trip to Hawaii, using the same voice he uses with his marks. He promises Patrick he will come back.Patrick wants to believe him, and so he does.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 17





	Carson City

**Author's Note:**

> If the tags and reference to CPS in the summary didn't already give it away, this is a fairly grim little character study of Patrick Jane, Boy Wonder.
> 
> Unbeta'd, so all mistakes are proudly owned by me.

When you’re part of the travelling show, you learn how to take care of yourself early. You’re born working, because if you don’t work, you don’t eat.

Before he’s big enough to be real help, Patrick’s a useless mouth to feed. His dad makes sure he knows it. When things are tight just after Patrick’s eighth birthday, his dad checks him into Child Services in Carson City. He sells it like an all-expenses-paid trip to Hawaii, using the same voice he uses with his marks. He promises Patrick he will come back. Patrick wants to believe him, and so he does.

His first night is an endless violation—inspections, showers, clean clothes, and a series of sterile little rooms and unfamiliar faces, both kids and adults. At night, the tiny ones cry. Some of the bigger ones seem happy to be there, sort of. They think they own the place. Patrick wonders if someone dropped them off here and promised to come back, but never did.

Sleeping in a bed in a large building feels exposing and terrifying. Unnatural. Patrick’s not feral, but neither is he domesticated. Child Services is unlike anywhere he’s ever been, and he’s seen forty-two states in his eight years of life. The air is dry and processed, he can’t feel the morning dew or the dry of summer or the damp winter or the gust of visible breath when it’s cold. He’s disconnected. He’s in a bottle. It’s summer, and it’s California, and he wants to sleep outside. Everything is always the same, day in and out, and it unnerves him.

He empties the little closet in the dorm room and makes his bed in there. It’s not the motor home, but it’s better. They haul him out the next morning, so he steals the key for the janitor’s closet and sleeps in there the next night. They don’t find out for a week, but by then he’s grown used to the place and is okay with sleeping in the bed they insist he has to use.

Sometimes when the carnival circuit passed through fertile lands, they’d stop to glean fields for fresh fruit and vegetables. Other months, they were lucky to be eating beans and rice, and begging for any leftovers from the food vendors. More than a few times his meals had been the half-eaten castoff hot dogs and hamburgers left abandoned by the patrons, or over-buttered toxic yellow popcorn so salty he thought he’d throw up, but his body was so hungry it fought to keep it all.

Here, the food comes every day, three times a day. He gains weight, enough that they have to get him new clothes within the month.

He steals and hoards food, eating whenever food is nearby. The staff are always missing bits and pieces of their lunches, but they can’t prove its Patrick.

In one town, back when he was five, they snuck in to see Star Wars. He was only small, but he remembers it. They sent him to steal the popcorn and food while they stole wallets from patrons by crawling under chairs. He was still enthralled by the movie, full of adventure, eating until he was sick on liquorice and popcorn.

Patrick learns how other people outside the circuit behave—the right kind of manners, the right type of conversation, how to win loyalty and trust and empathy, how nine-to-five schedules and school and family dinners rule their lives just like the show rules his. Getting what you want from these people involves making them feel responsible, making them feel guilty. Or, make them think they’re getting something from you; they’re always willing to take. Everyone wants to be a winner. If you’re just another hopeless kid to them, then they don’t care at all.

Patrick learns how to make people care, how to find their buttons and press them. He never feels the connection back, because he knows he _makes_ them care. It’s not genuine, it’s manipulation. He pulls at their heart and purse strings. He tries on a different personality in different situations, learning the things people do—music, cars, movies, various hobbies, et cetera, et cetera. He learns how to walk and talk like different people, watching from the inside how he affects the people around him by how he changes. He’s got a hundred different suits to slip into whenever he wants. They protect him and keep him safe.

But there’s a tool more powerful than the lies and manipulation: the truth.

It’s a literal show-stopper, once he starts putting it to work. He watches his dad use it on marks, and the judicious use of it amongst the lies is what makes it when he does special readings. The tears flow when their truths are held up to them. Nothing else destroys a person quite like it.

People like to ignore the truth because they think it’s polite, and because it keeps them safe. Social graces and manners are handcuffs that people have forgotten they wear. Patrick can swing the truth like a sword because his hands are free. He can fell people at the knees. Sometimes they cry and hate him. Sometimes they cry and thank him, then hand over wads of cash.

Patrick has his own truths, but he doesn’t look at them. He’s happy enough to pretend they’re not there, and nobody dares to tell him. They think he doesn’t know, and feel better than him because of it.

He can’t sleep, so he reads a lot. He reads everything in the pathetic children’s library, down to the baby picture books. When he runs out, he starts stealing books from the offices of the social workers. It takes a lot of patience fumbling with picking the locks, but he gets better and faster, since no one else is up at night. He teaches himself psychology and DSM terminology with the book in one hand and a dictionary on the other. Knowing their language and their tactics makes it a lot easier to see through what the workers are doing with ham-fisted subtlety, and helps him turn it around on them. It’s a fun game for a while, seeing which psychoses they can label him with. Eventually they spot that he’s playing them when every counsellor has him labelled with a different syndrome.

He values few things, but he’ll fight to protect them with his life. He gets into, and loses, quite a few fights until he realizes he’s no match for anyone if the fight devolves into throwing fists. The kids in child services are mean, and angry. Once the punches start, he retreats into himself. He shuts down everything around him because it’s too much. He can take the punches if he can’t feel them.

The best way to win is to rig the game from the start. Fool the stupid kids into getting themselves in trouble. He takes a sucker punch in front of a counsellor, and the kid gets sent to juvie. He doesn’t regret it. The kid was a psycho in training who would be in jail by the time he was 18, so all Patrick did was speed time along. None of the bullies are very smart, and they think they’ll get out of it by blaming him, but Patrick is good at looking small and vulnerable. Patrick works it to his advantage, and starts getting his stuff back. Then he gets more, little gifts and favours from the kinder adults, the ones who try to encourage the poor little weak kid to ‘keep your chin up until your dad gets back.’ He gets everything he wants, and after a while it’s not even a challenge anymore.

The carny philosophy: you take care of your own. Us vs them. Everyone else is a mark. You never abandon your people because they are all you have, and the rest of the world doesn’t care about you. Patrick’s people aren’t here, but he has people to take care of. There are the little ones who need somebody, who have been left by the people who should be taking care of them. He entertains them with simple tricks, with the nice shade of blue in the crayon box, with a butterfly going by. He teaches them to make whistles out of grass blades, and find shapes in the clouds. No one can take these toys away, he tells them.

Sometimes at night, Patrick lets himself think about what he misses. He missed the ocean. He misses the sound of the motorhome wheels humming on the road. He misses his dad. He misses Angela. He misses _everyone_. He wonders what he did wrong to end up here, and how he can make sure he doesn’t do it again.

His dad comes back one day without warning. He has a new motorhome, cash in his pocket, and promises that he’s “cleaned up.” Patrick doesn’t care if he’s clean or unclean, he’s just so glad to see him. He smiles as his dad tells him all the things he’s learned, and Patrick laughs at all the right places. He doesn’t know why a part of him is sad to leave Carson City. He hated it, and never wanted to be there in the first place. But on the first few nights back with his dad, when the lights are loud and the midway is screaming with music and voices, he wishes he could go back. He wishes he could hide under the bed he hated so much and never come out. He doesn’t tell his dad, because it would hurt his dad’s feelings.

Patrick is older and wiser now, and he is ready to work and earn his keep. He knows that if he doesn’t, he can’t stay. His dad teaches him what he needs to know about people, and Patrick files it away with everything else.

The only way to win the game is to make sure you’ve got it rigged in your favour, and so Patrick learns everything.

**Author's Note:**

> I found this in my WIPs recently - I have no idea if I'd intended it be part of something bigger, but since it stands alone well enough, I'm sharing it here.
> 
> I'm usually not happy with stories that end without some hope to pick up and take with you at the end, so I guess I'm just gonna take a moment to remind myself (and maybe you?) that moments like this are just one part of the path, and not the whole story.
> 
> Fuck. I made myself _sad_ y'all.


End file.
